'A Christmas Carol' could be an ode to modern day America — and Coachella Valley kindness

It defies explanation. Every year at this time the miracle of Charles Dickens’ story, "A Christmas Carol," is repeated throughout the Coachella Valley in acts of kindness, sharing and generosity.

Dickens’ tale is timeless: A curmudgeonly old man renounces his selfish ways, adopting generosity through propitious lessons from his inglorious past, present reality, and portentous warnings regarding his future.

Coca-Cola delivered to us the red-coated Santa and the tree originates in Prince Albert, but most of our modern day conception of what makes a Merry Christmas derives from Charles Dickens, forever tying him to the season.

Shocked by the cruel poverty and exploitation children faced related by an 1842 Children’s Employment Commission report and stirred by his visit to the Athenaeum — a poorhouse in Manchester — the same year, Charles Dickens began writing the well known novella "A Christmas Carol" upon returning home — 6,000 copies were printed and sold within days of its December 19, 1843 release — ensuring its renown on both sides of the Atlantic.

An immediate critical success, the film adaptations that followed through the years made the story a staple for Americans at Christmastide, as Dickens’ tale gained mythical status — becoming much more than a fictional diversion.

Combining a strong sense of social conscience and altruistic passion proved to be a compelling combination, enduring tale and powerful part of making Christmas as we know it today.

In parallel to current conditions, Dickens wrote the story during a recession as a slam against the governmental welfare system (or Poor Laws), requiring recipients to face the drudgery of providing the puissance for treadmill-powered factory engines.

The classic features a stonily forbidding and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge undergoing an ideological, moral, and spiritual transformation subsequent to the phantasmal visits of his former business partner Marley, and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Christmas Yet to Come.

In a literary way Dickens brought attention to the struggle of those displaced into abject poverty by the Industrial Revolution, and of the commonwealth’s responsibility to provide for them in a humanitarian fashion.

Many Americans can relate to Dickens now more than ever — considering the widespread layoffs among many industries due to innovation and advances in technology creating a job gap that requires new skills and retraining.

So, in effect, "A Christmas Carol" resonates as much today in a 2018 America as when Dickens penned the tale 175 years ago.

Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge served as examplar for America’s pre- and post-Civil War period, rousing people to practice unselfish munificence to the less fortunate, as the nation grappled to solve poverty’s unending cycle.

Depicting Ignorance and Want as disturbingly repellent children doomed to lives of poverty and squalor, for his part, Dickens exhibited to the wealthy classes that their wealth and status didn’t license them to sit in judgment of the poor, but to act in philanthropic and charitable assistance.

And as many undoubtedly have witnessed themselves (even on the pages of this newspaper), the spirit of sharing and giving to those in need is rife in our community, and all across America.

Indeed, Dickens does speak to us at this time of year, as he does every Christmas. May “God Bless us, every one!”